I am starting this blog because our dog Whitey lost his eye sight this past June. He is only 8 1/2 years old. THe vets (we went to 5 of them !) all say they do not know what caused it. But everything has a cause. So I was wondering if anyone else out there had an experience like this.
To make a long story short (I'll try)........Whitey starting having some health issues about 1 year ago. He could not stop drinking and urinating. We went to our regular vet - they thought he had Cushings Disease. They sent us to Tufts Vet School for further tests - they thought he had Cushings, but after some extensive (and expensive) tests, he did not have it. Our vet and Tufts Vet wanted to treat him for Cushings anyway, even though he did not have it. We declined....not going to give him strong drugs for something he does not have. Then we tried a holistic vet for about 5 months. He could not figure out what Whitey had. Then in June, he started bumping into things. So we went to Tufts again - he had some more tests - they confirmed that he was blind. (This was so heartbreaking, it is even hard to write this).
So we asked why, how, etc..........they said they don't know....that he had something called SARDS...which means he lost his eyesight with no apparant cause.
So then we decided to try to find a vet to see if we could figure out the drinking so much.
We did find a vet that diagnosed that as Diabetes insipidus.... so he is on medication and that problem is solved......I am putting this out there so if anyone else has similar issues they can ask about this type of Diabetes, and prevent their dog from going blind. No one knows if they are related, but I would bet they are........
I am doing this blog to save someone from all the pain and heartache we have been through and to let you know that if your vet thinks your dog has Cushings, but keeps getting negatives - he may have Diabetes insipidus - and you may catch it soon enought so that your dog does not go blind.
If anyone has any comments or similar experiences, I'd appreciate hearing from you. Thank you.
